


The Man in the Moon

by Browa123



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Gen, Immortality, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 09:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20851013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Browa123/pseuds/Browa123
Summary: Angst Day 2019"I get why the bad guys in all those superhero stories wanted immortality now. They're lonely sons of bitches that never cared for anyone in their sad, pathetic lives."





	The Man in the Moon

Danny looked at the Earth from the moon, and let out a sigh. How many years has it been?

You think he'd be happy up here. In space, on the moon with the stars and the world in a state of relative peace. But that could not be further from the truth.

No, Danny was not happy. He didn't really care to feel anything anymore. Recalling his feelings would just cause him pain. Pain he was tired of feeling now, after millennia of sadness. He couldn't go,down to anything, or it would hurt him.

What must it be like? To die with no regrets, and move on to a different realm based purely on paradise for your good deeds in life? To move on, and have closure.

Humans don't live forever. It's a fact. They grow old and gray with years and years passing by them, memories to live with and eventually pass on to the next life.

Not halfas. Halfas get another ten years before they become stuck in time and can't change any further. They get to sit and watch while their friends and family grow older and content while they are left young and unsatisfied.

Danny inspects his white glove, adorned with the ring of rage. His hand is pristine, young, without a wrinkle to be found. The exact same way it has been since his tenth deathday. His human form would still be in much the same condition.

It's kind of hard to hide your secret identity when you don't age. You find yourself standing with a group of friends in their fourties, but you still don't look a day older than over a decade ago. Not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle around your nose...

It's how his parents found out. It's how he found out that he could regenerate from being atomized and destroyed all over again when they tried to rid themselves of his ghost. He wishes their experiments killed him.

It was painful as hell, and the pain didn't stop until he was whole again. He ran away from home after that. His friends followed him.

His friends always followed him. No matter where he went, they'd go. Even if Tucker busted a hip or they had to pause to catch their breath, they always followed him. They weren't as young as they used to be. Danny is.

Despite the pain they caused him, Danny went to his parents funeral. He was invisible the whole time. When everyone left, he placed blood blossoms on their graves. The burns from the flowers regenerated after a few hours.

Before he knew it, he found his friends couldn't follow him anymore. Sam was in a wheelchair, Tucker needed a walker, and Jazz grew tired easily. So he followed them.

Danny makes a joke about Jazz's hair being whiter than his one day.

He doesn't want them to go. But humans don't live forever. They grow old, and they die, and the Halfa can only watch it happen. He's invisible for their funerals as well, leaving blood blossoms on their graves.

He doesn't want to be selfish. They should get to move on in peace. Seeing their ghosts with only broken memories of him wouldn't be fair to them.

After the passing of his friends, he returned to the ghost zone to fulfil his destiny as the Darksbane Halfa, the hybrid who defeated the old king. His coronation was a simple event.

Not that a single ghost cared about having him for a king. If anything, all his title did to him was intimidate any potential friends and make him more powerful enemies. Enemies that wanted his title. He refused to give this power to the wrong hands.

He wishes his friends were here, but he doesn't wish it out loud. He wants to let them rest. It was obvious from day one he isn't allowed the luxury of resting. It belongs to people he'd never see again, who moved on without him.

So he looks on from the moon, discontent as ever. But he can't do anything about it. It's his duty and his curse to stay and guard the world for the rest of time. To keep life and death in balance as he acts as the solitary scale between them.

It's not often he hears his name in the human world. Danny Phantom to the modern age was nothing more than a myth, or a fantasy someone came up with one day, and never existed. There was no proof left in the world he ever did.

And even when the universe was to eventually die, be reborn and start anew, he'd still be here. Watching and waiting, protecting the balance of life and death throughout space.

"I get why the bad guys in all those superhero stories wanted immortality now. They're lonely son's of bitches that never cared for anyone in their sad, pathetic lives." Danny mutters to himself, the wide expanse of space swallowing his words like nothing.

"This is bullshit!" He cries out to the uncaring universe. "Why did it have to be me, damn it! Why did I have to be the one stuck with this burden, why did I have to be the one stuck like this forever?!"

Silence is his answer. Not a single sound comes back to him.

Hot tears begin to prick his eyes as he falls to his knees, the dust of the moon scattering in the low gravity as he pounds his fist against the surface of the ground.

"Why... why was it me stuck with this? All my friends are dead, my family died hating me for what I am, and I'm forced to stay here for all eternity without a damn thing to my name other than the empty title of king. The king of dust and sand with a kingdom that hates him!"

He pounds the ground again. "I can't even die! At least Plasmius got to die! Even Dani got to die! Im just left here with nothing!"

The memory of Vlad's ghost half consuming his human half into oblivion burned in his brain. The man was never a stable Halfa, and his own ectoplasm poisoned him in a way that he could not regenerate from. The ghost destabilized without an anchor.

Danny failed to save either side of him.

Danielle wasn't stable either. The amount of ecto reject she needed increased in the years she was around, and then one day she looked Danny in the eyes and asked him to let her be at peace. Danny didn't want to be selfish, so he granted her wish.

Danny looks at his hands. Looks at himself, looks how selfish he's being. This isn't about what he wants. But he wants so much that he can never have and his very soul is crying because of how hard he's worked for nothing. All that he has is nothing.

He's sick of the pains of his desires, but he can't rid himself of them. He can't split himself into his human and ghost selves, not in this condition. Anyone that ever knew who he was is dead and passed, and he couldn't risk his ghost becoming something worse than Dan in his grief.

Here he is, the lone fool. He has everything. But He doesn't want a single peice of it. All his power, his immortality and his life continue to curse and damn him to a fate worse than death. And that fate is forever living.

He clenches and unclenches his fists. Nothing he can do can fix what he has. And he's rather not grow attached to something he'll loose later down the line. Lives in the world before him flicker like a candle and die before he knows it.

But all he can do is be reminded of home. A home with friends and family in such a distant past that it's hard to recall what did and didn't happen.

Danny sits back and admires the stars. It's the one thing he did still have. To look up at the sky and take in the beauty of the universe that hears no man's plea. In that way, it would never judge you.

So, with his burden on his back, Danny continued to watch the Earth. And as he watched the Earth, he let his emotions ebb and fade. But they would always return, and he found himself hiding his face to cry, where no one would hear.

In time, things ended, and they began again. Danny continued to watch the world from the moon, in a place the universe could not judge him, no matter the times he watched it's rebirth. He lets the world go by in its own way.

And maybe, just maybe, he can see his family again one day.


End file.
